Camborne, Cornwall
Historical Description
Camborne, a town and a parish in Cornwall, on the G.W.R., 307 miles from London. The town stands in the centre of a rich mining tract, 14½ miles WSW of Truro. It is a thriving place, a scene of considerable traffic, a seat of petty sessions, and has a bank, a market-house of 1866, a church, and four dissenting chapels. It has a head post office. Acreage of the civil parish, 6931; population, 14,700; of the ecclesiastical, 7887. The town is governed by a local board of 12 members. It is well lighted, and has a good sytem of drainage. A Working Men's Institute was erected in 1872. The Camborne Mining School and School of Art adjoins this institute. New public rooms-the great hall of which is capable of seating 1500 persons-were opened in 1891. The church is Perpendicular English, in granite, large, but very low, contains a carved wooden pulpit, a new granite font, and monuments of the family of Pendarves, and had on the outside an ancient inscribed stone, placed there by the late Lord de Dunstanville, and believed to have been originally an altar cover. This is now placed in the chancel under the present altar. A weekly market is held on Saturday, and fairs on 7 March, Whit Tuesday, 29 June, and 11 November. Pendarves, about a mile S of the town, is a modern granite edifice, contains some good pictures, and a rich mineral cabinet, and stands in a fine park, formed entirely out of a moor. Tehidy, the seat of the Basset family, has a good collection of pictures, and stands in a park of upwards of 700 acres. Cambrea, a rocky eminence 740 feet high, is regarded by Borlase as having been the chief seat of the Druids in the west of England; and Carwinnen, a wild moorish hill confronting Pendarves, has at its foot a cromlech called the Pendarves Quoit. Extensive mines are worked, and employ most of the inhabitants. Dolcoath mine, about 3 miles W of Carnbrea, has been sunk to the depth of 2500 feet, and extends under ground fully a mile. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Truro; value, £704. The vicarages of Tucking Mill, Penponds, and Treslothan are separate charges. A modern church in the Norman style is at Tucking Mill, and a handsome one built in 1842 is on an eminence in Pendarves Park. An ancient chapel stood on the latter's site; another stood at Trewin, adjacent to a medicinal well. There are Roman Catholic, Wesleyan, Primitive Methodist, and Bible Christian chapels.
Camborne or North-Western Parliamentary Division of Cornwall was formed under the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885, and returns one member to the House of Commons. Population, 323,571. The division includes the following:- East Penwith (part of)-Camborne, Crowan, Gwinear, Gwithian, Illogan, St Ives, Phillack, Redruth; East Kerrier (part of)-Gwennap; West Powder (part of)-St Agnes.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Cornwall | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Camborne St. Martin | |
Hundred | Penwith | |
Poor Law union | Redruth |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Camborne from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Camborne (St. Martin))
Maps
Online maps of Camborne are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Cornwall papers online:
- Royal Cornwall Gazette
- Cornishman
- West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser
- Lake's Falmouth Packet and Cornwall Advertiser
Visitations Heraldic
We have a copy of The Visitations of Cornwall, by Lieut.-Col. J.L. Vivian online.